A Study in Drowning

by Ava Reid

I was a girl when he came for me, beautiful and treacherous, and I was a crown of pale gold in his black hair. I was a girl when he came for me, beautiful and treacherous, and I was a crown of pale gold in his black hair. I was a girl when he came for me, beautiful and treacherous, and I was a crown of pale gold in his black hair. She repeated the line over and over again in her mind, and then she spoke it out loud, into the black night and its uncanny silence. “I was a girl when he came for me, beautiful and treacherous, and I was a crown of pale gold in his black hair.” She was not afraid. She needed him to come. And then, behind the tree line, a flash of white. Wet black hair. Even a sliver of face, pale as moonlight.